With musical standards exploded and reassembled
from the dust in between 1975 and 1977, Ar­thur Brown had pretty little hope of
maintaining even a small pinch of notoriety. Even Kingdom Come, with all of
their progressive trappings, were so far out as to be considered «underground»
in the early 1970s. Now, with the New Wave revolution in full flight, Arthur's
1% of recognizabi­lity would be reduced to about 0.01% — particularly since he
continued to behave as if his own musical evolution were on a completely
self-sustainable path, not necessarily ignorant of what­ever comes around, but
never for one moment giving reason to suspect that it could be influenced by
some particularly current «fad».

So, in 1977, when everything around was
changing and adapting, Brown instead made the most «normal» album in his entire
catalog. Despite still working with Dalby, and despite old madman friend
Vincent Crane returning to guest star on one track, Chisholm In My Bosom continues the line of Dance — upgrading the challenge a little bit by returning to epic
length compositions and cutting down on cover versions, but overall, simply
coming across as standard-fare «intellectual entertainment» without any serious
attempts to break new ground.

In fact, the opening couple of numbers could
easily throw the demanding listener into the arms of a hissy fit. ʽNeed To
Knowʼ, with its gentle double-tracked slide guitars, sounds like formulaic
country-rock, unexpectedly soft, mild, and mannered the same way Lou Reed
surprised his fans with Coney Island
Baby several years earlier. Not everybody will want to acknowledge that the
slide arrangements are quite exquisite and emotional (Andy Dalby's talents on
the podium again?), but it's also true that this isn't at all the kind of music that we would readily associate with
Brown. The faster-paced R'n'B dance number ʽMonkey Walkʼ is a little more
familiar, giving us Brown's sexy, rambunctious side, and the band plays very
well, including the brass arrangements and the back vocals, but where ʽNeed To
Knowʼ could be seen as too blatantly sentimental, ʽMonkey Walkʼ might just be a
bit too generic and silly.

The rest of Side A wanders between Brown's
newly-shaped passion for gospel (ʽThe Lord Is My Saviourʼ), epic optimistic
R'n'B (ʽLet A Little Sunshineʼ), and dark funk (ʽShe's On My Mindʼ — the only
track here to contain a shred of the old madness, maybe due to the
participation of old friend Crane). There is also a re-recording of ʽI Put A
Spell On Youʼ for those who'd for­gotten he already did it a decade earlier —
slower, less freak-out-ish, more keyboard-dependent, and quite unnecessary in
the long run.

Then there is the second side of the album,
given over in its entirety to the title track — which, rather than trying to
play out like a multi-part progressive suite, sounds like a cross between a Bob
Dylan epic, a Van Morrison epic, and a Jim Morrison epic: a long, wordy ramble
spread ac­ross several relatively simple melodies with relatively simple
acoustic / keyboard-heavy (Mello­tron included) arrangements. Much of it sounds
(but not necessarily is) improvised, and quite per­sonal — sort of a lengthy,
multi-layered confession that must have meant a lot to the guy in 1977, but is
hardly the kind of item we should be expected to enjoy thirty years on. Or
maybe I just don't get it, but anyone can be excused for not trying very hard
to «get» a twenty-minute acoustic / Mellotron epic from Arthur Brown written in
1977, provided it is not really out there to get you itself. It's certainly no
ʽSad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlandsʼ, anyway — neither the instruments nor Brown's
vocalizations are enough to strike out the necessary amount of magic to carry
it on for such a long time period.

Overall, the record is quite far from a crying
disaster, as it has been characterized by the very few people who still managed
to hear it (or not to hear it), but it neither has the unique weirdness of
Kingdom Come nor the occasionally brilliant hook of Dance (not a single highlight of the ʽQuiet­ly With Tactʼ variety).
Hence, coming from the likes of Arthur Brown, it is not easily made clear why
the hell it even exists. Each and every one of these tracks, in its respective
genre, could have been better coming from someone else.